The only one here that’s crying is you…
And I’m definitely enjoying this event, even more so after reading your whine posts…
Oh no, that one hurt me… 
One thing is for sure, compared to you at least I know how to have fun and enjoy the event instead of complaining about it here in the forums…
The problems with event sites are both coming from psychology and game design.
We had a couple of events where payouts were fantastic. Obviously, for game balancing reasons, not all events can be like that. But once you, as a game developer, create such an event any next event that is less profitable will be perceived as bad and you will have people complaining.
One way you can mitigate that is with game mechanics. However, the mechanics of the event sites haven’t really changed for a while. That’s understandable from the development perspective. Eve is not a game that is driven by the constant publishing of new events, so it makes sense to have a backend framework to create different variations of sites quickly and launch it. From the player point of view it’s just missing expectations, and that is amplified with even a slight balance or a drop rate problem.
If the content is both not profitable and not engaging, players will complain. Especially if there are some obvious mistakes in loot tables (ex. NPC event haulers and keys). You don’t have to be “instant gratification player“ to notice all of this.
Anyway, I’m done with this topic 
We will probably see a patch within the next couple of days that will tweak the event, especially if Reddit is particularly angry about some aspect of it. But people will still complain… they always do for any type of product or service. That’s just how humans are. The only question is, how can it be mitigated.
I couldn’t disagree more — Winter Nexus 2025 is brilliantly designed, and half the charm is exactly in the parts people complain about. The LADs being mostly empty? That’s intentional, hon — it creates movement, tension, and actual gameplay instead of just AFK farming; it’s practically CCP’s love letter to exploration-style PvE. And the keys? They’re working beautifully for those who understand them: the “empty” ones are actually part of a hidden scaling mechanic that rewards consistent participation over raw luck, and the difficulty spike isn’t always tied to NPC count — most of it is in resist profiles and incoming burst windows, which many players miss because CCP finally tuned encounters to be more subtle. The loot variance is also deliberate: the better drops are weighted toward streaks, encouraging players to keep running sites instead of face-rolling one and quitting. And 20m for keys is a healthy, player-driven economy indicator showing that scarcity is actually doing its job. Meanwhile, the Perseverance track, the atmosphere, and the engagement loops are some of the best they’ve seen in any game. Compared to others, his event is far more thoughtful, far more balanced around long-term participation, and far less prone to marauder-blitz abuse. CCP didn’t goof; they finally made Winter Nexus challenging, dynamic, and rewarding for players who embrace the design instead of fighting it.
We had a couple of events where payouts were fantastic. Obviously, for game balancing reasons, not all events can be like that. But once you, as a game developer, create such an event any next event that is less profitable will be perceived as bad and you will have people complaining.
I have been doing the Winter nexus events pretty much since their inception. And almost all other events as well. This is among the worst isk/h out of all of those events. I won’t say it’s THE worst, as I wasn’t as efficient at running them years ago as I am now.
And no, they shouldn’t be too lucrative either. I know, for example, the 2024 Crimson harvest event was insanely lucrative, and people printed tens of billions during that. I happened to miss that one, but that’s not good design either.
Generally Winter nexus has been less lucrative than Crimson harvest on the isk/h, but been more easily farmable due to the sites being contained within the storms and having very fast respawn times. However, the isk/h of previous Winter nexus has still been relatively high due to them being farmable in marauders. Now the sites aren’t farmable in marauders, but the pay per site is still balanced to them. Effectively CCP has pretty much halved (or even worse) the isk/h of Winter nexus just by doing this.
It’s a lot easier to print isk when a site takes 2-3 minutes and you can just warp to the next one vs. when a site takes 5-6 minutes.
But this is really just part of the issue.
One way you can mitigate that is with game mechanics. However, the mechanics of the event sites haven’t really changed for a while. That’s understandable from the development perspective. Eve is not a game that is driven by the constant publishing of new events, so it makes sense to have a backend framework to create different variations of sites quickly and launch it. From the player point of view it’s just missing expectations, and that is amplified with even a slight balance or a drop rate problem.
The game mechanics of most events have never been very engaging. It’s always “figure out a proper fotm-fit for the best allowed ship, then either go sit in a single room and shoot at npc’s or clear a couple gated rooms”. This isn’t exactly bad if the pay is right, but if it’s both boring AND unrewarding, it’s not a good design.
Sometimes there have been additional things, like this year’s “hunt the LADs”, and those always make the events marginally more interesting and engaging. However, if these additional gameplay mechanics just feel like a chore with zero benefit or negative benefit - like this year - then it makes the whole event feel even worse.
Anyway, I’m done with this topic
Usually they tweak it, yes. Reddit isn’t really having any opinion on this from what I saw. They seem to be more interested in talking about PH drama and other null stuff. Which is actually way more interesting than this event, I admit 
I couldn’t disagree more — Winter Nexus 2025 is brilliantly designed, and half the charm is exactly in the parts people complain about.
Honestly, I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic or you really believe this. That’s the worst part, considering the type of people here on EVE forums.
Actually, was this written by an AI?
I gave up with sarcasm in forums a while ago. It doesn’t work. I’m not being sarcastic at all — I genuinely mean it. I know opinions can get… intense around here, but I really do appreciate the work CCP puts into these features and events. Even when things aren’t perfect, I like giving credit where it’s due. So no hidden message, no sarcasm — just sincere appreciation.
I use A.I to translate only. Much better than Google. Translate. I do speak some English but still have trouble putting my thoughts on paper.
It’s garbage.
Crimson Harvest was enjoyable, this isn’t.
It’s a pain which results in a BPC you have to pay a shed load of ISK to then build (if you can be bothered).
On top of which we have a few day old alt trying to convince other players that it’s a “brilliant design”
32 Different Keys that all looks the same, but only three of them are real keys that opens up
Scrambled Relays, with the other 28 of them with absolutely zero clues on what they are for without
anything but a comprehensive bunch of videos on the Net here and there where errors and repetitions can give a clue on what is what and which is which???
It’s good Event, not perfect…
CCP: We are renaming Dense Veldspar to Veldspar III-Grade to make it easier to understand.
Also CCP: Here are Ultra Neutron Cataclysmic Modulator and Super Positron Hellscape Obfuscator. They are keys for Sample Submission Nexus and Transit System Relay.
Some dude did the farming + math for the average loot of the mining boxes so I’ll add some crunch to the salt:
Normal crate: 1.660.215 Isk
Rare crate: 1.760.000 Isk (no shards found)
Upgraded crate: not enough data but not much higher than normal crates.
Based on a maxed out Endurance (~48s cycle time) you can get ~10.7 crates / h (warping and moving around not included). That is an average of 17.764.300 Isk / h + a few rare crates. Wow.
Since the drop chance of the haulers is so low (probably 1:7 - 1:10 .. didn’t find someone who had the patience to kill enough for statistical relevance) and the payout doesn’t seem to be much higher on the upgraded crates, the average Isk / h for those is much worse. Although data is a bit sparse on haulers + upgraded crates.
It’s not about getting rich with events but actively being punished for participating doesn’t feel right. Also, the low drop chance of those freighters is just discouraging.
I really don’t get why ppl. are still defending this. But maybe they are rich and are just glad they see something different than Ishtar spinning or are heavily into roleplaying. Whatever. For everybody else it’s more lucrative to jump into an Exhumer and mine with some friendly Orca support some Veldspar in High Sec. This even has comparable gameplay mechanics (mining, flying around).
Long story short: everybody I know stopped the event after getting the BPC, some even skipped it at all. Sounds like fail to me.
edit: updated data so that shards are included in the payout
edit 2: Increase drop chance for haulers to 100% + heavily increase payout for upgraded boxes and this could work.
edit 3 : removed confusion between upgraded + rare crates
Damn, this is even worse than I expected.
I haven’t touched the ice mining -portion this year, as it’s always been mind numbingly boring and very low income, but this has to be the absolute worst it has ever been.
How can anyone think this is fine for this event? It’s supposed to be the big year’s end celebration event, not… whatever the heck this is.
I finished it once by doing combat sites in hisec, tested a little on the null exploration -portion and did a couple combat sites in null. Then I went back to crabbing, and I can easily say I made far more in ~2,5h of milking beacons than I did on the event in total - including selling the Perseverance for the insanely inflated price of 900 mil.
Such a shame.
He’s a forum troll.
Your expectations have been mismanaged.
I would suggest doing a little research into the Yoiul Lads but I doubt that you would be willing to put in the effort.
Just kick back and claim your 31 days of freebies.
Events present a bit of a paradox. They’re meant to be exciting, yet because they’re temporary, it’s hard to justify investing too much dev effort into them. At the same time, reusing content undermines the very idea of events, since the sense of novelty and excitement fades if its just the same as last year.
Over time, CCP may come to recognize the limitations of this event based approach to growing the game.
Here’s the worst part IMO:
I got the Perseverance bpc, built it and fitted it and found, to my horror, that the 3 lasers on the Perseverance together mine at almost exactly the same rate as the 1 laser on my Endurance that I did the event with. WTF? Lasers on the Perseverance cycle over 3X LONGER than the same laser on the Endurance.
Devs - at least give a bonus to an ice mining ship prize that’s better than the ship you use to get it.
The pre-event hype made it seem like the Perseverance would mine 3 times faster than the Endurance, not at the same rate. <bait&switch?>
Maybe. From my perspective, that dev time that was put into the event would have been spent much better into the non-event parts of the game if it was meant to be played for just a couple of hours to get the BPC. I know that they reused a lot, but they overhauled it. So at least they had one meeting, a few hours of coding (including staring at the build pipeline to put it to a test stage) and 10 minutes of testing.
You mean lore wise? No thanks, if I want to role play, I do pen & paper stuff. If there is a mechanic to increase the drop chance, I honestly missed it. Maybe you can enlighten us.
I put in the effort to post in this forum knowing that I’ll get harsh comments from people claiming that making money in High Sec is bad and nobody cares anyway.
another day, another swing alt post number 35
I mean, you’ve had the ship statistics available to you even before the patch. The hull bonuses are very clearly listed on both Perseverance and Endurance.
Endurance gets a huge bonus to cycle time, while Perseverance gets a huge bonus to crit and NO bonus to cycle time.
With boosts on grid, the Perseverance becomes a pretty solid ice mining ship. Too bad it’s laughably overpriced right now.
Doesn’t matter if you boost or not - boosting, or not boosting, the Endurance mines with almost exactly the same amount of yield with 3 lasers as the Endurance mines with 1.
Why do I need the Perseverance?
That makes no sense, I presume you mean the Perseverance mines with 3 what the Endurance can with 1?